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Who Was Morgan Odoherty?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Ralph M. Wardle
Ralph M. Wardle*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

Morgan Odoherty, the mythical Irishman who contributed to Blackwood's Magazine in its salad days, is usually—and correctly—acknowledged to have been the creation of Captain Thomas Hamilton. Yet he is almost always identified with Dr. William Maginn, the sprightly contributor from Cork who reprinted several Blackwood Odoherty articles as his own and later used the pseudonym in articles for Fraser's Magazine. Maginn has, accordingly, been praised and damned for many an article in which he had no part. The letters which he wrote to William Blackwood prove that he was only one of many who contributed Odoherty-signed articles. And although as years passed he wrote a larger and larger share of them, he never completely preempted the pseudonym.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , September 1943 , pp. 716 - 727
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1943

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References

1 Hamilton (1789–1842) was a native of Glasgow whose literary reputation was based on his novel Cyril Thornton and his recollections of military life, Annals of the Peninsular Campaign from 1808 to 1814. When he died Lockhart referred to him as “the original O'Doherty, which Maginn took up.” See Andrew Lang, Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart (London and New York, 1897), ii, 290. And on May 20, 1818, Mrs. John Wilson wrote to “her sister in England”: “You asked if Ensign O'Doherty was a fictitious character; he is, and was created by a Mr. Hamilton, … a brother of Sir William Hamilton.” See Mrs. [Mary Wilson] Gordon, “Christopher North,” a Memoir of John Wilson (New York, 1863), p. 188.

2 These letters are quoted by permission of the owners, Messrs. William Blackwood and Sons, Ltd., of Edinburgh.

3 Dublin University Magazine, xxiii (1844), 80. Kenealy quotes a letter from Moir, who, as a contemporary contributor to Blackwood, deserves confidence. The date he offers is partially substantiated by the statement of John Neal, an American contributor to the magazine. See Atlantic Monthly, xvi (1865), 670.

4 Odoherty Papers, ed. R. S. Mackenzie (New York, 1855), i, 28n.

5 See Nodes Ambrosianae, ed. R. S. Mackenzie (New York, 1854), v, iv, and Fraserian Papers, ed. R. S. Mackenzie (New York, 1857), p. xxi.

6 See Fraserian Papers, p. xxxi: “A portion of [‘Some Account‘] certainly was not by Maginn, though he as certainly wrote the concluding chapters, and from that time, figured largely in Blackwood under the soubriquet of MORGAN ODOHERTY. It was the late Major Hamilton … who commenced the Memoirs of Odoherty.” Mackenzie reprinted “Some Account” as “Memoir of Morgan Odoherty,” presenting the four instalments as “Chapters”; hence the confusing references.

7 The only Blackwood articles acknowledged by Maginn were those included in his Magazine Miscellanies (1841), a periodical reprint of papers from other magazines. It is significant that the Miscellanies contained no Blackwood articles originally published before November, 1819.

8 The letter is reprinted in Mrs. [Margaret] Oliphant's Annals of a Publishing House: William Blackwood and His Sons (Edinburgh and London, 1897), i, 365.

9 Blackwood's Magazine, vi (1819–20), reverse side of page containing Table of Contents for November.

10 Miss Miriam M. H. Thrall, in Rebellious Fraser's (New York, 1934), pp. 305–306, has already pointed out that Thomas Aird, Moir's biographer, attributes “The Auncient Waggonere” to Moir. See Poetical Works of David Macbeth Moir (Edinburgh and London, 1852), i, xxviii-xxix. In the same passage he lists “The Eve of St. Jerry” as Moir's. Since he was a personal friend to his subject and a fellow-contributor to Blackwood, his testimony is probably reliable. Moreover, Moir himself undoubtedly intended to claim “The Auncient Waggonere” in his footnote to The Modern Pythagorean cited below, note 15.

11 See the passage from The Poetical Works of Moir cited above, note 10.

12 The entire “Boxiana” series has usually been attributed to Wilson, who wrote most of the Blackwood sporting articles. Maginn himself credits Wilson with the series in his write-up accompanying Maclise's portrait of Wilson in the “Gallery of Illustrious Literary Characters” (Fraser's Magazine, iii [1831], 364). The Blackwood correspondence offers no hint of who wrote the earliest “Boxiana” papers, but references in the letters of both Wilson and Maginn prove that Wilson wrote the final instalments of the series. He may have been aided by other members of the staff, but he was probably always, as the consistence of style and approach suggest, in control of the several papers.

13 Fraserian Papers, p. liii.

14 See discussion below, pp. 723 f.

15 See Robert Macnish's The Modern Pythagorean, ed. D. M. Moir (Edinburgh and London, 1838), i, 392n. Moir actually claims to have written “some imitations” which Coleridge “imputes … to Dr. Maginn,” and he probably intended to acknowledge both “Christabel, Part Third” and “The Auncient Waggonere.” But Coleridge, in the passage of his “conversations” referred to, mentions only the continuation of “Christabel.” See The Table Talk and Omniana, ed. T. Ashe (London, 1923), p. 314.

16 Fraserian Papers, p. xxxi.

17 Montagu's edition, published in two volumes by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington of London in 1885, is composed largely of articles selected from Mackenzie's earlier edition of Maginn. I shall, therefore, discuss its inaccuracies only when they vary from Mackenzie's.

18 Byron, “Mr. W. W.,” and Odoherty need no introduction. Dr. Scott was a Glasgow dentist whom Lockhart often used as the butt of his jests, and Seward was a classical scholar at Christ Church, Oxford. Maginn thus describes the three remaining “contributors” in a letter to Blackwood dated June 20, 1820: “Dr. Barrett [Vice Provost and Professor of Hebrew at Trinity College, Dublin] is not angry. His books are the strangest things in the literary world. He has written on the Signs of the Zodiac—a life of Swift, a most amazing one—and a treatise on the Codex Montfortiensis. … Jennings is a soda water man—a very fair butt—Dowden is librarian at the Cork Institution. He is the very prince of butts.”

19 Mackenzie does, however, remark that the letter from Dr. Scott may have been Lockhart's work. (Odoherty Papers, ii, 53n.)

20 Dublin University Magazine, xxiii, 80. Moir's exact words are: “… I have always believed to be all written by [Maginn].”

21 Maginn disclaims authorship of the speech in his letter of June 20: “You know I am not accountable for the speech but I can inform you that Mr. Thomas Holt is a writing master who dabbles a little in what by the courtesy of the country is called philosophy.”

22 See above, note 18. The letters of Byron, Dr. Scott, and Mr. W. W., which Moir withholds from Maginn, are virtually accepted as Lockhart's by Andrew Lang (Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart, i, 256). The Seward letter is more of a problem; the Greek and Latin poems in it are the sort of thing that Maginn enjoyed writing, but Seward had been the butt of Blackwood jests before Maginn began contributing to the magazine. There may be some significance in the fact that, while the first five letters follow no set form, the last three, which are almost certainly Maginn's, are structurally identical: each begins with a terse address to Christopher North and concludes with the full date and the sender's address.

23 Blackwood, xvi (1824), 346.

24 The letter clearly proves that Maginn did not write the “Rhapsodies over a Punch-Bowl,” which Montagu reprints as his in Miscellanies: Prose and Verse.

25 Odoherty's article supplied a report of the sale of Blackwood in Ireland, missing in North's earlier article. North explained the omission thus: “As bad luck would have it, Mr. Blackwood has mislaid the book in which he keeps the Irish department of our sale. In a note we have this moment received from him, he tells us, that he had fondly hoped that it had been left at Ambrose's, last great Quarterly dinner, but that mine host could not find it among his ledgers, and has an indistinct recollection of O'Doherty carrying it away beneath his arm at day-break. If so, we request the Adjutant, wherever this meets his eye, to return our Irish ledger immediately.” (Blackwood, viii [1820–21], 88.) “Odoherty” took the hint and wrote in his sequel: “It is a fact, indeed, that I took a handful of dirty papers off Ambrose's table, for purposes not worth mentioning, but I did not think them of any use; and it is lucky for you, that I have not worn the same breeches ever since, as they remained safe and forgotten in the bottom of one of the pockets, until your impertinent remark recalled them to my memory. Here then are your accounts for you… .” (Blackwood, viii, 190.)

26 Dublin University Magazine, xxiii, 80.

27 Loc. cit. Here and elsewhere Kenealy supplements Moir's list with a few articles which he assumes that Moir overlooked.

28 Odoherty thus apologizes for his failure to send more contributions: “I have been spending the last half-dozen months in such a round of dissipation and idleness, that, the devil take me if I could command my intellects … for half an hour together. I have been literally, since the fragment of a letter I wrote you from Killarney [i.e., the ”Luctus“ contribution], hurried about from one quarter of the Emerald Isle to the other.” Then presently: “By the by I was horribly angry, at first sight, with observing, in that exquisite morceau of thirty pages, ‘The Tete-a-Tete,’ what you have said with regard to my abstracting the memorandum book of your Irish sale, and the sarcasm on my pantaloons; but my features gradually relaxed to a smile, and … I could not help bursting into ‘a loud guffaw’ at the joke, for you certainly intended it for such.” (Blackwood, viii, 536.) Notice that “the sarcasm on my pantaloons” was printed as Odoherty's own in the earlier “Letter.” (See quotation above, note 25.)

29 Dublin University Magazine, xxiii, 80.

30 See Poetical Works of D. M. Moir, i, xxxiii: “Besides his regular contributions of grave poetry to Blackwood … he was now pouring forth … all manner of jocularities in prose and verse—familiar letters and rhyming epistles from O'Doherty; mock-heroic specimens of translations from Horace; Christmas carols by the fancy contributors, Mullion and the rest; ironical imitations of living poets; Cockney love-songs; puns and parodies.”

31 Dublin University Magazine, xxiii, 82.

32 See the quotation above, note 30.

33 Dublin University Magazine, xxiii, 83.

34 Ibid.

35 See the quotation above, note 30.

36 Blackwood's reply, in which he quotes Hamilton as saying, “Any one but yourself … would mar the melodies,” appears in Kenealy's “Memoir of Maginn” (Dublin University Magazine, xxiii, 83).

37 See my note in LTLS for October 9, 1937.

38 “Concerning the Noctes Ambrosianae,” MLN, li (1936), 495n.

39 The problems of Maginn's authorship of “Noctes” papers and his identification with Odoherty are, for the most part, separate, and could not well be treated in a single paper.

40 Note that during the year 1822 and the first half of 1823 there were few Odoherty contributions in Blackwood. Was this because Hamilton had abandoned the pseudonym and Maginn not yet adopted it?

41 M. Clive Hildyard, Lockhart's Literary Criticism (Oxford, 1931), p. 158. Additional evidence of Lockhart's authorship appears in Mrs. Gordon's Christopher North, p. 265.

42 The same issue contained the first of four brief notes from Odoherty which were appended to longer articles as a means of expanding or approving their ideas. Since three of these articles—“Letters of Timothy Tickler, No. ix” (September, 1823), “Letters of Timothy Tickler, No. xii” (December, 1823), and a review of Theodore Hook's latest issue of Sayings and Doings (March, 1824)—can be proved to be Maginn's work, and since he does not mention the postscripts in his correspondence about the articles, it is reasonable to suppose that they were added by an editor shortly before publication. With the fourth of these notes, which accompanies “The Last Words of Charles Edwards, Esq.” (October, 1823), a short story signed “Titus,” we are on surer ground, for Blackwood wrote to John Wilson on September 20: “I had also made up a very singular story of a suicide, which I received from London, from a person who merely signs himself ‘Titus.‘ O'Doherty's note is by Mr. L[ockhart].” (Mrs. Gordon, Christopher North, p. 266.)—Note, incidentally, that Mackenzie reprints “The Last Words of Charles Edwards, Esq.” as Maginn's in Odoherty Papers. It was probably by the “Mr. Thomson” who wrote the “Twenty-one Maxims to Marry By,” also signed “Titus.” See discussion below, note 49.

43 The letter, written to remind Blackwood of the amount he owed the writer, contains a list of the page numbers of all Maginn's contributions for the year 1824; all articles which were “more or less interpolated” are marked with an asterisk.

44 The signature of the “Ballads”—“Morgan ODoherty, LL.D.”—suggests that Maginn was rapidly appropriating to himself the name and character of Odoherty. For although Odoherty had hitherto been known only as a military man, Maginn had been a Doctor of Laws since 1819. Yet Maginn seems not to have been consulted about the new title, for on February 9 he wrote to Blackwood: “Apropos—let Mr. O'Doherty drop the degree of LL.D. henceforth. I cannot afford it as things go.”

45 Maginn could hardly have overlooked this article, as it occupies the first 16 pages of Volume xvi of the magazine.

46 Maxims 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, 27, and 107 are omitted. Although these may have been excluded because they were written by another contributor, Maginn's letter of October 18 (quoted below, p. 726) proves that Lockhart wrote at least three of the Maxims reprinted in the Miscellanies.

47 The title of this instalment, “Maxims of Sir Morgan ODoherty, Bart.,” has been retained as the title of the whole series in all reprints.

48 Noctes Ambrosianae, ii, 35n.

49 “Twenty-one Maxims to Marry By” (May, 1826), which Mackenzie reprints in his Odoherty Papers, is signed “Titus” in the original. “Blackwood's Contributors' Book,” the publisher's record of articles printed after January 1, 1826, lists the author as “Mr. Thomson.”